Looking at our sunchoke page I noticed there is a useful part of the plant we neglected to mention- the dried stalks. They're not just for compost anymore!

Sunchokes can be harvested in the Fall or Spring. The tall dried stalks (they're even taller than me) need to be pulled to get to the tubers. During the Winter the stalks we leave behind the bird feeders create a bit of a windbreak and give the birds more places to land.

In past years we've thrown the stalks into our compost bin or added them to our birdie condo, which is the pile of branches and sticks in the photo below. Many birds shelter there in the Winter.

The compost can only hold so many, and Theresa didn't like the way they looked on the bird condo (too straight), so what do we do with the leftover stalks?

We decided to break them up like this...

For kindling to make this...

Yep... It's a great example of using all the resources we have. We only need a handful or two for some great kindling to start the fire in our wood burning stove!

Speaking of our stove... we'd like to thank everyone for making the wood stove section on our site the most viewed pages. We're getting so many hits that we have started writing a book about our experiences with the many uses of our wood burning stove.

Side note: We're also interested in what you would like to see in the book, so add a comment or send us an email with your suggestions.